Inequality Decreases, Income of Higher Strata Fall

INEGI has just published the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure for 2018. It should be noted that this survey is published every two years.

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In the first instance, it is identified that the average quarterly income in 2018 is $ 49,610, a fall of 4.1% compared to 2016, both in 2018 pesos.

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However, income from work is $ 33,382, a growth of 0.3%. What explains the drop in income? The answer lies in property income and transfers, which fell 35.8 and 5.3% respectively.

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It seems that the income from work is stable, but the extra resources of the families are diluted.

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Another point is that income in the first deciles increases by about 4% in real terms, while in the highest deciles it falls. This marginally decreases inequality, which goes from 0.499 to 0.475 measured by the Gini coefficient.

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The Survey also allows you to see the average quarterly income by schooling. For example, a worker with a high school earns $ 19,316 per quarter, when a worker with professional studies earns $ 37,177. The jump is abysmal when you get a graduate degree, going up to $ 86,880.

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However, the labor gap between men and women persists, where it is close to 6 thousand pesos per quarter for high school studies, 13 thousand pesos for professional studies and 47 thousand in postgraduate studies.

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Undoubtedly, the Survey allows us to see that inequality has decreased marginally, but there are structural factors that remain to be corrected.

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We'll talk later of this.